Lopez Blogs

Christian Ingebrigtsen ~ The Truth About Lies: Some of you may remember Christian as the one that inexplicably (now) i never wanted to boff from ace boyband A1. After they split up following the release of the criminally underrated Make It Good opus, the focus was on Ben Adams to get rid of the curtains and become a huge solo star. Which meant there wasn’t really much focus on the other three. And this is a shame, because if I had focused on following Christian’s career I would have been enjoying his music for years now instead of a few days. I haven’t heard his debut album yet, and I will be writing about his Christmas album very shortly, but his new album is actually a triumph of craftsmanship and pop creation. Each song is imbued with a sense of joy and pride in what he is doing which in turn allows the listener to wallow in the sheer giddiness of it all. The music is a mix of classic pop with plenty of piano, lush orchestrations, a sweet vocal and catchy melodies, tinged with some country, rock, and even a little emo added with influences from his A1 days, George Michael, Ronan Keating and Take That. Tracks like the perky uplifting Wonderyears, acoustic and charming Made For Me and honkytonk themed Easy Loving You are instantly accessible, sunny slices of pop that layer harmony over melody and are like a warm hug on the cold winter nights that are drawing in. There’s the slow side too on tracks like a faithful (but more piano driven) version of his old band’s Learn To Fly, the “Hazard”-esque (Richard Marx) How Is A Man and simply lovely Never Alone cleverly use subtle instrumentation to underscore the emotion in the song. The strongest tracks of a pretty strong bunch however are the title track which just soars into epic proportions, while lead off single Adorable is one of those songs where the title is the perfect description of the song (like Can’t Get You Out Of My Head for example). It’s the cutest slice of pop I’ve heard in a long time, and if it were paired as an AA side with Paint Christmas White it would be flying off the shelves this festive season (if iTunes has shelves). Needless to say this album is probably everything the BSB and Westlife albums should have been - intelligently crafted songs that really pay attention to arrangements and vocal clarity while never forsaking the intensely pretty melodies. Lovely. (PS ~ Look how polite that crowd are in the youtube clip of adorable!!)